As many of you know, Blackboard purchased WebCT 9 about 5 years ago with the intention of merging the best features of both into a single product and then discontinuing support for WebCT. After considerable effort, this intention has come to fruition in
Blackboard 9.1. Starting Fall 2011 GSU will begin the process of moving from WebCT (Blackboard CE-8) to Blackboard 9.1 with complete migration to Blackboard 9.1 for Spring 2012. Some of the increased functionality that will be realized in this move includes:
- A much more robust and easy-to-use grade book
- The ability to more easily construct and maintain courses
- Automated ‘to do’ and ‘past due’ notifications
- Automated messaging of notes to students who are falling behind and/or becoming at risk for failure
- An integrated plagiarism detection tool
- An enhanced group manager tool to make the setting up of group projects easier
- Built-in wiki and blog tools
- Ability to create ‘mash ups’ that integrate content from external sources such as Flicker, Slideshare and YouTube
- Excellent Mobile communication and content delivery capabilities …and much more
It is an exciting time and I’m sure you will be as impressed with the NEW and improved Blackboard features as much as we are. In order to assure a smooth transition, it is important that we begin faculty training workshops and provide each of you with Blackboard tutorials and shells for course development.
Please click on the button below to register for Workshop 1: Overview-The Blackboard Environment. In addition, review the on-going training schedule and sign-up for topics relevant to your design and teaching needs. The Center for Online Teaching and Learning is looking forward to working with each of you as we move into this new online environment. Please email Nikki Rosebourgh nrosebourgh@govst.edu with any workshop or training questions.
The schedule for conversion is very conservative in order to assure that we have adequate time to prepare faculty and students for the new environment. We currently have Blackboard 9.1 operational in a test environment. Click here to review our introductory timeline.
To compare CE-8 features with BB 9.1 features, view the comparison chart.
